In late June, GreenBiz hosted VERGE, an intriguing roundtable discussion among top executives about how vehicles, information, buildings, and energy all fit together and what the convergence of these technologies might mean for the future of business and society.
The meeting highlighted some very cool innovations waiting to be unleashed, and also exposed a major opportunity: Improving how we enable people in a user-friendly manner to help create the kind of future VERGE technologies enable.
Amidst the brilliance in the room, it became clear to me that at the current pace technology is advancing, it is only a matter of time before we have access to all the data and gadgets we need to address our future energy challenges.
A full list of the transformative technologies has been chronicled earlier on GreenBiz.com. My personal favorite is the platooning concept that will allow vehicles to drive themselves on freeways in close proximity to each other at fast speeds, thereby curbing their carbon footprint, all while you relax and watch DVDs of the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series in 2011.
An optimistic vision, yes, but even the most promising innovative technologies will not reach their full energy-saving and carbon-reducing potentials unless we create a culture that is dedicated to meaningful change. In order to do that, we must overcome one key obstacle: people.
Steve Murphy, a Director from Blach Construction, conveyed to the VERGE group that most facilities managers, who are critical for leading the charge on energy savings, are completely overwhelmed with data and can often be resistant to change. Building managers are just one part of the equation. Bill Glover, COO from the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) in Colorado, showcased the company's extraordinary new net zero facility in Golden, Colorado. But even with cutting-edge data and technology at his disposal, Bill said he still "needed everyone in the building to be thinking about energy every day."
That is a big ask. We know people are not thinking about energy conservation 24 /7 -- if at all.
Next page: Why Human Behavior is our Biggest Challenge
"Why do people think and act
"Why do people think and act the way they do?" - That is the right question to ask, but then subsequently asking "How can we change that?" is not necessarily the right follow up, or at least is far too simplistic a way to frame it.
In many cases it is that design in general (whether we're talking about laptops or buildings) needs to more effectively accommodate how people think, behave and relate to one another - to more effectively tap into underlying motivations; all of which can vary substantially with varying demographic factors and specific social/cultural/environmental contexts. Too often designers only have a superficial grasp of those behaviors and motivators and how they vary across the people they’re dealing with; nor are many equipped with the tools and knowledge base to tease out that information and effectively analyze it. Hence the need for social scientists.
For example, people leaving the AC/heating or lighting on when they’re not present sometimes has as much to do with technological limitations and design inadequacies as it does with their own behavior. Facilities that have a mix of occupancy sensors and manual switches often lead to people leaving the lights on in those spaces with the manual switches because they’re use to the occupancy sensors turning out the lights for them in the other spaces. And I don’t know how many times I’ve come across disabled occupancy sensors because the wrong types of sensors were specified or they were incorrectly installed with little to no commissioning.
Residences that are still built without installing programmable thermostats make it that much more likely that the AC/heating will be left on when unoccupied. And overly complex programmable thermostats may be completely ignored by older generations, non or low-tech individuals or those from another country with limited English language skills and who are relatively unfamiliar with U.S. residential construction/layout/use. These people may also be embarrassed or feel inadequate if they have to ask for help to figure such thermostats out. Even people who grew up in one area of the U.S., such as the desert SW where swamp coolers without programmable thermostats have historically reigned, could have some habits/knowledge gaps to overcome moving to the humid SE with AC systems/programmable thermostats.
This is not to say that some behavior modification isn’t a goal, but it needs to done in such a manner that effectively addresses human factors/needs/motivations and how they vary. And individual who grew up in India during the 50s/60s and experienced regular rolling blackouts will have different motivations/outlooks regarding energy usage and conservation compared to someone who grew up in the Midwest US during the 80s. Messaging or programs geared to subtly modify behavior might have to be structured differently for both individuals. But both individuals could live in the same U.S. neighborhood or work in the same facility.
Designers must take the time and make the effort to truly understand who they’re designing for and be open to the possibility that it might be their own behavior and way of thinking regarding design that could require a slight adjustment. And people/users/occupants must be brought in as part of the design process instead of having solutions imposed on them solely from the “top” (management, design experts, community leaders, etc.).
Statements such as “…we must overcome one key obstacle: people” and “Technology by and large does what we ask of it. People do not” point to an underlying bias that if only people would just behave “rationally” and use the technology/buildings as we (the designers) intended, then everything would be ok. But the thing is, people do behave “rationally” relative to their own contexts – their needs, motivations, relationships social/cultural backgrounds, work environments, living environments, greater social/political contexts, etc. – designers just don’t always understand that and that the contexts themselves should be the focus of modifying as opposed to the individual behavior itself. I doubt that the author intended to communicate the above bias, but that is the message unfortunately conveyed. We have to be careful how we frame and present dealing with human factors.